A Song for Arbonne

She had been much the same herself, Aelis reflected, not so long ago.

She glanced over at her cousin, at the quick, expressive, dark eyes and the long black hair tumbling free. Her own hair was carefully pinned and covered now, of course; she was a married woman, not a maiden, and unloosed hair, as everyone knew, as all the troubadours wrote and the joglars sang, was sheerest incitement to desire. Married women of rank were not to incite such desire, Aelis thought drily. She smiled at Ariane though; it was hard not to smile at Ariane. ‘No cloak this morning, bright heart, it would feel like a denial of the spring.’

Ariane laughed. ‘When even the birds above the lake are singing of my love,’ she quoted. ‘Though none can hear them but the waves.’

Aelis couldn’t help smiling again. Ariane had the lyric wrong, but it wouldn’t do to correct her, it might give too much away. All of her ladies-in-waiting were singing that song. The lines were recent and anonymous. They had heard a joglar sing the tune in the hall at Miraval only a few months before during the winter rains, and there had been at least a fortnight’s worth of avid conjecture among the women afterwards as to which of the better-known troubadours had shaped this newest, impassioned invocation of the spring and his desire.

Aelis knew. She knew exactly who had written that song, and she also knew rather more than that—that it had been composed for her, and not for any of the other high-born ladies whose names were being bandied about in febrile speculation. It was hers, that song. A response to a promise she had chosen to make during the midwinter feasting at Barbentain.

A rash promise? A deserved one? Aelis thought she knew what her father would have said, but she wondered about her mother. Signe, countess of Arbonne, had, after all, founded the Courts of Love here in the south, and Aelis had grown into womanhood hearing her mother’s clear voice lifted in wit or mockery in the great hall at Barbentain, and the responding, deep-throated laughter of a circle of besotted men.

It was still happening now, today, probably this very morning amid the splendours of Barbentain on its own island in the river near the mountain passes. The young lords of Arbonne and even the older ones and the troubadours and the joglars with their lutes and harps and the emissaries from over all the mountains and across the seas would be dancing attendance upon the dazzling countess of Arbonne, her mother.

With Guibor, the count, watching it all, smiling to himself in the way he had, and then assessing and deciding affairs of state afterwards, at night, with the glittering wife he loved and who loved him, and whom he trusted with his life, his honour, his realm, with all his hope of happiness on this side of death.

‘Your mother’s laughter,’ he’d said to Aelis once, ‘is the strongest army I will ever have in Arbonne.’

He’d said that to his daughter. She’d been sixteen then, newly returned home from two years on Rian’s Island in the sea, newly discovering, almost day by day, that there seemed to be avenues to beauty and grace for herself, after an awkward childhood.

Less than a year after that conversation her father had married her to Urté de Miraval, perhaps the strongest of the lords of Arbonne, and so exiled her from all the newly charming, flattering courtiers and poets, from the wit and music and laughter of Barbentain to the hunting dogs and the sweaty night thrustings of the duke he’d decided needed to be bound more closely to his allegiance to the ruling counts of Arbonne.

A fate no different from that of any daughter of any noble house. It had been her mother’s fate, her aunt’s in Malmont to the east across the river; it would be black-haired Ariane’s too, one day—and night—not far off.

Some women were lucky in their men, and some found an early widowhood—which might actually mean power here in Arbonne, though not, by any means, everywhere in the world. There were other paths as well: those of the goddess or the god. Her sister Beatritz, the eldest child, had been given to Rian; she was a priestess in a sanctuary in the eastern mountains near Götzland. She would be High Priestess there one day—her parentage assured at least so much—and wield her own measure of power in the intricate councils of Rian’s clergy. In many ways, Aelis thought, it was an enviable future, however remote it might be from the laughter and the music of the courts.

On the other hand, how close was she herself to such music and such laughter in Miraval, with the candles and torches doused just after dusk and Duke Urté coming to her in the night through the unlatched door that linked their rooms—smelling of dogs and moulting falcons and sour wine, in search of temporary release and an heir, nothing more?

Different women dealt with their destinies in very different ways, thought dark-haired, dark-eyed Aelis, the lady of Miraval, as she rode under green-gold leaves beside the rippling waters of Lake Dierne with vineyards on her left and forests beyond.

She knew exactly who and what she was, what her lineage meant to the ferociously ambitious man she’d been given to like a prize in the tournament at the Lussan Fair: Urté, who seemed so much more a lord of Gorhaut in the cold, grim north than of sun-blessed Arbonne, however full and ripe the grapes and olives might grow on his rich lands. Aelis knew precisely what she was for him; it didn’t need a scholar from the university in Tavernel to do that sum.

THERE WAS A SUDDEN sound, an involuntary gasp of wonder beside her. Aelis stirred from reverie and glanced quickly over and then beyond Ariane to see what had startled the girl. What she saw stirred her own pulse. Just ahead of them, off the road beside the lake, the Arch of the Ancients stood at the end of a double row of elm trees, its stones honey-coloured in the morning sunlight. Ariane hadn’t taken this ride before, Aelis realized; she would never have seen the arch.

There were ruins of the Ancients all over the fertile land named for the Arbonne River that watered it: columns by the roadside, temples on cliffs by the sea or in the mountain passes, foundations of houses in the cities, bridge stones tumbled into the mountain streams and some still standing, some still in use. Many of the roads they rode or walked today had been built by the Ancients long ago. The great high road beside the Arbonne itself, from the sea at Tavernel north to Barbentain and Lussan and beyond them into and through the mountains to Gorhaut, was one of the old straight roads. All along its length were marker stones, some standing, many toppled into the roadside grass, with words upon them in a language no one living knew, not even the scholars of the university.

The Ancients were everywhere in Arbonne, the simple sight of one of their ruins or artifacts, however unexpected, would not have drawn a cry from Ariane.

But the arch by Lake Dierne was something else again.

Rising ten times the height of a man, and almost as broad, it stood alone in the countryside at the end of its avenue of elms, seeming to master and subdue the gentle, vine-clad landscape between the forests and the lake. Which, Aelis had long suspected, was precisely the purpose for which it had been raised. The friezes sculpted on both the near face and the far were of war and conquest: armoured men in chariots carrying round shields and heavy swords, battling others armed with only clubs and spears. And the warriors with the clubs were dying on the friezes, their pain made vivid in the sculptor’s art. On the sides of the arch were images of men and women clad in animal skins, manacled, their heads bowed and averted in defeat, slaves. Whoever they were, wherever they now had gone, the Ancients who had set their marks upon this land had not come in peace.

‘Would you like to see it more nearly?’ she asked Ariane mildly. The girl nodded, never taking her eyes from the arch. Aelis lifted her voice, calling ahead to Riquier, the leader of the corans detailed to ride with her. He dropped hastily back to her side.

‘My lady?’

She smiled up at him. Balding and humourless, Riquier was much the best of the household corans, and she was, in any case, prepared to smile at almost anyone this morning. There was a song winding through her heart, a song written this winter, after the festive season, in response to a promise a lady had made. Every joglar in Arbonne had been singing that song. No one knew the troubadour who had written it, no one knew the lady.

‘If you think it safe,’ she said, ‘I should like to stop for a few moments that my cousin might see the arch more closely. Do you think we could do that?’

Riquier looked cautiously around at the serene, sunlit countryside. His expression was earnest; it was always earnest when he spoke with her. She had never once been able to make him laugh. Not any of them, actually; the corans of Miraval were men cut from her husband’s cloth, not surprisingly.

‘I think that would be all right,’ he said.

‘Thank you,’ Aelis murmured. ‘I am happy to be in your hands, En Riquier, in this as in all things.’ A younger, better-educated man would have returned her smile, and a witty one would have known how to reply to the shameless flattery of the honorific she had granted him. Riquier merely flushed, nodded once and dropped back to give his orders to the rear guard. Aelis often wondered what he thought of her; at other times she wasn’t really sure she wanted to know.

‘The only things that belong in that one’s hands are a sword or a flask of unmixed wine,’ Ariane said tartly and not quite softly enough at Aelis’s side. ‘And if he deserves a lord’s title, so does the man who saddled my horse.’ Her expression was scornful.

Aelis had to suppress a smile. For the second time that morning she had cause to wonder about her young cousin. The girl was disconcertingly quick. Despite the fact that Ariane’s words reflected her own thoughts exactly, Aelis tendered her a reproving glance. She had duties here—the duties of a duchess towards the girl-woman who had been sent to her as a lady-in-waiting for fostering and to learn the manners proper to a court. Which was not, Aelis thought, going to happen in Miraval. She had considered writing her aunt at Malmont and saying as much, but had so far refrained, for selfish reasons as much as any others: Ariane’s brightness, since she had arrived last fall, had been a source of genuine pleasure, one of the very few Aelis had. Not counting certain songs. Even the birds above the lake are singing of my love …

‘Not all men are made for gallantry or the forms of courtliness,’ she said to her cousin, keeping her voice low. ‘Riquier is loyal and competent, and the remark about the wine is uncalled for—you’ve seen him in the hall yourself.’

‘Indeed I have,’ Ariane said ambiguously. Aelis raised her eyebrows, but had neither time nor inclination to pursue the matter.

Riquier cantered his horse past them again and swung off the path, angling through the roadside grass and then between the flanking trees towards the arch. The two women followed, with corans on either side and behind.

They never reached it.

There was a crackling sound, a surge and rustle of leaves. Six men plummeted from branches overhead and all six of Urté’s corans were pulled from their horses to tumble on the ground. Other men sprang instantly from hiding in the tall grass and raced over to help in the attack. Ariane screamed. Aelis reared her horse and a masked assailant rushing towards her scrambled hastily back. She saw two other men emerge from the trees to stand in front of them all, not joining in the fight. They too were masked; they were all masked. Riquier was down, she saw, two men standing over him. She wheeled her horse, creating room for herself, and grappled at her saddle for the small crossbow she always carried.

She was her father’s daughter, and had been taught by him, and in his prime Guibor de Barbentain was said to have been the best archer in his own country. Aelis steadied her horse with her knees, aimed quickly but with care and fired. One of the two men in the road before her cried out and staggered back, clutching at the arrow in his shoulder.

Aelis wheeled swiftly. There were four men around her now trying to seize the horse’s reins. She reared her stallion again and it kicked out, scattering them. She fumbled in the quiver for a second arrow.

‘Hold!’ the other man between the trees cried then. ‘Hold, Lady Aelis. If you harm another of my men we will begin killing your corans. Besides, there is the girl. Put down your bow.’

Her mouth dry and her heart pounding, Aelis looked over and saw that Ariane’s frightened, snorting horse was firmly in the grasp of two of their attackers. All six of Urté’s corans were down and disarmed, but none seemed to have been critically injured yet.

‘It is you we want,’ the leader in front of them said, as if answering her thought. ‘If you come gently the others will not be further hurt. You have my word.’

‘Gently?’ Aelis snapped, with all the hauteur she could manage. ‘Is this a setting for gentleness? And how highly should I value the word of a man who has done this?’

They were halfway to the arch, among the elms. To her right, across the lake, Talair was clearly visible. Behind her, if she turned, she could probably still see Miraval. They had been attacked within sight of both castles.

‘You don’t really have a great deal of choice, do you?’ the man before her said, taking a few steps forward. He was of middling height, clad in brown, with a midwinter carnival mask, unsettlingly incongruous in such a place as this, covering most of his face.

‘Do you know what my husband will do to you?’ Aelis said grimly. ‘And my father in Barbentain? Have you any idea?’

‘I do, actually,’ the masked man said. Beside him, the one she had wounded was still clutching his shoulder; there was blood on his hand. ‘And it has rather a lot to do with money, my lady. Rather a lot of money, actually.’

‘You are a very great fool!’ Aelis snapped. They had surrounded her horse now, but no one, as yet, had reached for the reins. There seemed to be about fifteen of them—an extraordinary number for an outlaw band, so near the two castles. ‘Do you expect to live to spend anything they give you? Don’t you know how you will be pursued?’

‘These are indeed worrisome matters,’ the man in front of her said, not sounding greatly worried. ‘I don’t expect you to have given them much thought. I have.’ His voice sharpened. ‘I do expect you to co-operate, though, or people will start being hurt, and I’m afraid that might include the girl. I don’t have unlimited time, Lady Aelis, or patience. Drop the bow!’

There was a crack of command in the last sentence that actually made Aelis jump. She looked over at Ariane; the girl was big-eyed, trembling with fear. Riquier lay face down on the grass. He seemed to be unconscious, but there was no blade wound she could see.

‘The others will not be hurt?’ she said.

‘I said that. I don’t like repeating myself.’ The voice was muffled by the festive mask, but the arrogance came through clearly.